Overloading

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Overloading is a chess tactic where a piece has more than one exclusive defending obligation. For instance, if the defending piece is member of two or more balanced defend and attack sets (equal number of attacks and defends) of their respective critical squares, the piece is likely overloaded, except for defending sliding pieces with both squares connected by a single move. Critical squares, attacked by the opponent, are either occupied by pieces from the defenders side, and/or otherwise mate threatening squares around the king or the backrank.

Despite tactics is the domain of search, and static evaluation of overloading pieces seems complicated considering tactical interactions and issues like pieces en prise or hanging, discovered attacks, checks, pins, Zwischenzug and counter attacks, some programs statically determine overloading pieces and other tactical motives for counting all kinds of obligations to consider their balance in nonlinear evaluation terms and/or controlling the search, quiescence search and their selectivity.